Tales to Keep You Up at Night by Dan Poblocki

Author:Dan Poblocki [Poblocki, Dan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2022-08-16T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

You wake with a start, wondering for a moment where you are. You sit up. The darkness feels like someone stealing your breath. You reach for the lamp next to the bed, and when the glow reaches across the balcony floor, you remember that you’re at the cabin.

Downstairs, one of your friends is snoring softly. Tae probably. She’s the heaviest sleeper.

Cold shocks your bare feet on the floor. You make your way downstairs to the bathroom. As you wipe sleep from your eyes, you feel a sudden panic. Through the blinds, you can see the spotlight illuminating the patio at the rear of the cabin. Someone forgot to turn it off.

Your vision lands on the bookshelves beneath the window. Curious, you kneel. Your fingers settle on the box. You take the cards into your lap.

There was one card left in Kylie’s spread—one last sentence in the story the cards were trying to tell.

Curiosity is a type of enchantment. You’re under its spell now. You find yourself sitting at the table in the small kitchen. The candle in the center flickers as you let the cards pour through your hands, again and again. You divide the deck in two and then flutter the cards back into a single pile. Then, just like you saw Kylie do earlier, you cut the deck in three and then put it together again. You do this twice more.

You know what’s going to happen.

You want to stop. But something won’t let you.

You place the deck facedown.

Shadows dance all around.

At the end of the hall, someone’s breath halts, then settles back into a steady rhythm.

You reach for the card on top. You know what you will find there, but you turn it over anyway. A pale face is at the rear window, empty eye sockets peering through a gap in the blinds, the tip of the blade tap-tap-tapping against the glass.

It is, in fact, the last sentence in your story.

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